I 'Ship Friendship
by Ekwy
Summary: A collection of my drabbles. No HBP spoilers. Updated: When He Knows the Truth. Sixyear old Ginny Weasley is sitting at the kitchen table drawing when she gets an idea.
1. Sunshine

Disclaimer: The quotes from OotP belongs completely to J. K. Rowling, just like everything else HP.  
This story was written especially for fondued jicama. Mwah!

**Sunshine**

He felt nothing but the chill. It started at his fingertips, where the veil had touched his skin, and it spread to consume his entire body. He felt numb. This shouldn't happen. His eyes searched frantically for Harry, for his godson, but it was suddenly so very dark around him...

_"SIRIUS!"_

So very dark. He felt a pang of fear as he remembered all those years in Azkaban. He had felt cold like this, he had tried to see through darkness like this, and if he listened for it he could hear the raspy breathing of the Dementors.

_"SIRIUS!"  
"There's nothing you can do, Harry ­"_

It shouldn't end this way. It couldn't end. Then there was a light, and he felt a little better. He had heard about the light. That meant that he had at least done something right.

_"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"_

He felt... light. Very light. As the cold completely took him over, he felt how something broke. Something... snapped, and suddenly there was warmth and light. He could feel sunshine on his hand. His pale skin, that hadn't felt such a thing in many years, burned with the sudden heat. He noticed that his eyes were closed. He opened them.

_"- it's too late, Harry."  
"We can still reach him ­"_

He was standing outside, on a green field. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and far away there was the glittering of the sea. The air smelled of roses, and when he looked around he could see a collection of rosebushes not far away. Two people stood there by those bushes, holding hands, and his breath got caught in his throat. There was one man and one woman, both so painfully familiar that he didn't know what to do. He couldn't look them in the eyes.

_"There's nothing you can do, Harry..." _

The woman smiled at him and waved, her red hair flying in the wind and getting in her face. The man beside her pushed up his glasses that had been sliding down his nose, grinned at Sirius and brought the woman's hand to his own lips to kiss it. Sirius took one step closer, not believing, not daring to believe...

_"... nothing..." _

The beautiful pair laughed and he could finally meet their gazes. There was nothing but compassion and love looking back at him, and his lips quirked a hopeful smile. The man in front of him opened his mouth to speak...

_"... he's gone."_

"Hullo, Padfoot."


	2. The Banana Burglars

Disclaimer: Not mine.  
**A/N:** Written for UDG. Snuggle!

**The Banana Burglars**

What first met the eyes when you walked through the properly polished glass doors of number 93 Diagon Alley, was a barrel filled with odd hats in different colours. There was a sign over the barrel, saying: "Headless Hats! Amuse Your Friends and Horrify Your Enemies! Nine Galleons, Today Only!"

Going left past this barrel, you ended up by the counter, where George Weasley stood, a mad grin plastered on his freckled face, and if you went to the right you got to the small department of the store that was reserved for the Weasleys' Skiving Snackboxes. There you also most often could find Fred Weasley, claiming to "guide" the eleven-year olds that came into the shop into the wonderful world of Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougats and Fever Fudges.

During the day, Weasley Wizard Wheezes was a place of colour and light and joy. But now it was night.

"This is not a good idea."

The voice was male, and didn't sound too old. He was probably in his early twenties or something. It was too dark to know for sure.

"This is the best idea ever, Gav." This voice was older, and also male. It sounded annoyed. "Now shut up."

"I don't like this."

"That's the problem with you, Gav. You don't like anything."

"But this is bloody _stupid_. If you don't mind be say so, Merv."

There was a faint clicking sound as someone bent down to pick up a stone from the street. Merv snorted.

"Don't be daft, Gav. You were the one that said we needed money."

"Yes, but I never thought it'd be _this_ way! We're about to break in somewhere."

Merv hushed. "Idiot! Why don't you just shout it out for all of London to hear?"

"Sorry."

"Now. Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

A crash echoed through the night as the earlier mentioned stone flew through the air and broke the glass door into Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. There was a moment of brief silence while the two men on the streets waited for something to explode. When this did not happen, Merv chuckled in delight.

"See?" he said triumphantly. "Nothing to worry about at all."

"Perhaps not," said Gav and took a tentative step forward. "But I'll be a lot happier when I'm twenty miles away with the money. This place ain't healthy."

"Then what do you suppose we do? Gringotts?"

The two men paused to shiver. They had lost one or two colleagues to the vast labyrinth of the Wizarding Bank.

"Not Gringotts," said Gav resolutely. "But does it really have to be this place?"

"The owners are young and have probably not had time installing an alarm yet. All the other stores on this street already know about us, Gav."

"Oh yes..." Gav paused. "You go in there first."

"Fine!"

Merv rolled his eyes and went up to the broken door. He did not use a wand to open it further. He didn't have a wand. It was broken in two and probably lay in a drawer at Argus Filch's office, together with other wands belonging to students expelled from Hogwarts. Instead, Merv picked up another stone and smashed at the door until he'd made a big enough hole to stick in his hand and turn the handle.

The door went up without a sound.

"And that's how it's done," he mused and waved at Gav to come over. "See! Nothing to be afraid of. They're just naive little children."

Gav wasn't so sure of that. He'd heard a lot of things about the Weasley twins, he had. Most of them were fairly amusing, like their famous escape from Hogwarts last term. Gav didn't remember the red-heads very clearly. They had only been measly Second years by the time he'd left school. Besides, they had been in Gryffindor. Gav had been a Hufflepuff.

A Hufflepuff in trouble, he realized now. But could he refuse the chance to go into this store now, when the door had been opened and his friend (well, almost friend) was looking at him like that? No, of course not.

Gav ran up to his companion, and together, they snuck into the store. Merv didn't care to close the door. It was in the middle of the night, who would pass by at this time?

Gav and Merv walked over the floor, Gav almost falling head first into the barrel of Headless Hats. Merv snorted.

"Just a nice burglar you are," he said. "Just be qui..."

He had meant to go on, but something happened then that the burglars hadn't counted with. Everything suddenly seemed... bigger. And they felt how their bodies turned slightly bent, and how things suddenly smelled vaguely tropical, and my, had their skins been that yellow earlier?

The following morning, Fred and George Weasley took the stairs three steps at the time. They were sure they'd heard sounds from the shop downstairs in the middle of the night, and were hoping that their trap had worked.

Fred tittered as he held up the two bananas and shook his head. "You'd think they'd learn," he said sadly. "Oh well. You Floo the Aurors, and I'll... un-bananafy this pair."

"Right," said his twin and chuckled. "Our trap worked really well, innit, Fred?"

"I'm very proud of us."

"Yes, we're utterly magnificent."

"Glorious, really."

"One might even say that we're geniuses."

"Indeed."

The brothers high-fived, and then they went on to do their civic duty. After all, they had a business to run.

---

**A/N:** English isn't my first language, if something's wrong with it, please tell me. Thanks!


	3. Let the Sandman Come

Disclaimer: Not mine.  
**A/N:** For principessa05. Hugs for all!

**Let the Sandman Come**

Remus J. Lupin sat by his desk in his room at Grimmauld Place number Twelve. He was thinking. Not thinking too hard, of course, since that hurt too much. Now he was the only Marauder left to fight Voldemort. He felt strangely empty. James was dead. Sirius was dead. Peter had left the side of the good forever.

Remus sighed. For the first time in many years, he felt truly alone. He looked over his shoulder at the bed. No point in being awake anyway. He might as well try to rest. There would be times when he wouldn't be allowed to sleep for days, oh yes, so he might as well enjoy it while he still could.

Crawling in between the sheets, Remus let his mind wander. If he'd allowed Harry to go after his godfather when the boy cried his name, would Sirius still be alive? Would Harry have been able to save him? He knew the answer already: No, of course not. The mysteries of that Veil was a closely guarded secret, but one thing about it was common knowledge and that was that no one had ever escaped from it. It had been too late already. Remus pitied the poor boy, who was now an orphan for the second time in his young life.

'His wounds will heal,' he thought as he closed his eyes and tried to relax. 'They always heal, though it might take time.'

Remus drifted off into sleep and blissful oblivion.

He was dreaming.

Sirius was looking at him from his place on the bed. It was a young Sirius, the Sirius he remembered from the youth, the Sirius without a care in the world. He seemed oddly out of place in the grey dullness of Remus' adult room. Sirius was too alive, too real to be of this world.

"I haven't really left, you know," he said and stretched out lazily on his back. "Never will."

"I know," said Remus, and his voice was that of an adult. "I still hear you everywhere, Padfoot. Your laugh. And your face is in every picture I see."

"That is very melodramatical of you, Moony. I didn't know you cared that much."

"That's because you are a damn fool."

Sirius chuckled. "True. It's the Black way, I'm afraid." He shrugged. "Oh well, life goes on."

"Not for you."

"Again with the drama. Stop it, it doesn't suit you."

Remus glared at him. "If you had just stayed here like we told you to, then none of this would've happened. Did you even think about how any of this would effect Harry?" He didn't wait for an answer. "And now looked what happened! You died, you daft GIT. And you left Harry all alone."

The young Sirius looked at him, with the genuine sadness in his eyes masked as anger. "So that is why you're dreaming of me, Moony? After all these years, I thought you'd cherish my memory a little differently."

He was starting to look a little faint around the edges, and Remus felt a sudden pang of terror that he'd go away. 

"I'm sorry," he said, rubbing his temples and sinking deeper into his brown leather chair. "I just need someone to blame. I need a reason. You can't just be gone."

"Blame Bellatrix then. She was the one to do the deed, after all."

"Oh, it would be all too easy to hate Bellatrix Lestrange, Padfoot. But I need more than that. I need to know why."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways. Isn't that what the Muggles use to say?"

Despite his grief, Remus dared to smile a little. "You were never a religious man, why start now?"

Sirius shrugged again. "Better safe than sorry. You never know what's behind the light." His grey eyes got something dreamy about them. "Except that there is a garden... with roses." He looked up and met Remus' eyes. "I have to go soon," he said. "And I know it's sad and everything, but... but I think it'll be all right in the end, somehow. Things always turns out okay for you, Moony."

"Not without you or James, it won't. Or Peter, for that matter," he added, although his face turned grim by the thought of their friends betrayal.

"You were always the strong one. The silent bookish type, a rather brilliant student, and the best friend one could ask for. It's important that you know this." Sirius hesitated. "You'll see me again. And James, and Lily. We'll all be waiting for you, when that time comes. And it will come, for it's really... war now. Again."

"I thought you said you'd never leave for real."

"I said once that I should live forever, remember?"

Remus nodded. "I remember. It was at James and Lily's wedding. Right before they cut the cake."

Sirius smirked. "Yeah. And look at me now. So really, when it comes to it, what do I know?"

And Remus woke up, and he looked out the window, where a shining star finally gave up and gave away it's light to the new morning.


	4. When He Knows the Truth

Disclaimer: .:checks:. Nope. Still not mine.  
**A/N:** Another for principessa05. Whee...

**When He Knows the Truth**

It was a rainy day, and Ginny was very bored. She sat by the kitchen table while her mother was bustling in the background, making something that smelled sweetly of chocolate.

Ginny sighed deeply to show her boredom, taking a peek at her mother as she did so. When she got no reaction, she sighed again, much louder than before. Molly took a break from making a knife chopping walnuts and turned around to face her daughter.

"What are you sighing about, dear?" she asked kindly.

"I am booored, mum!" complained Ginny and stretched out across the table. "There's nothing to dooo!"

"Nonsense," said Molly soberly. "There are tons of things for you to do. You could help me baking, for an example. Or play with your brothers."

"Fred and George are in their room, and I'm not allowed to go in there," pouted the little redhead. Her voice was a little muffled since she was speaking into the table. "And Ron is still asleep."

Ron had come down with a bad cold and had had a high fever that morning. Molly had allowed for him to stay in bed out of fear that he would infect his siblings. Fred and George were darlings when she knew she could force them to go outside if they got too much to handle, and they were always such a handful when they got sick.

She sighed. "Very well. And I suppose helping me would be out of the question?"

Ginny merely made a face at this.

"But when it is time to taste the cookies, then you surely will be ready to help." Molly shook her head. "What about drawing, then? You still haven't used the crayons you got for your birthday. You can make a pretty picture and give to your father when he gets home from work."

Ginny hesitated. "Can I send one to Bill and Charlie at Hogwarts too?"

"Isn't Percy going to get one?"

"Percy's stupid. He said I was too small to start flying on broomsticks."

Molly decided not to have this discussion again, but merely nodded and went to get the crayons. Ginny had gotten them for her sixth birthday in August, and they had been lying in a drawer for the past two months, unused. Time to get them out. Molly placed them and a couple of sheets of paper on the table. In that very moment the kitchen clock chimed, and the one hand was pointing at "Time to make tea."

"Good," said Molly. "You sit here and draw, dear, and I put on the hot water. Then I'll call your brothers and we can all have tea together. How does that sound?"

Ginny shrugged. She was already working ferociously on a picture. While Molly went back to her baking, Ginny drew a princess. She was very pretty with blonde hair and blue eyes, and she wore a long dress. Since the crayons were magical, the dress was shimmering in pearly pink, and the princess was waving at Ginny with a hand that was slightly too big for the rest of her body. Ginny looked at her drawing critically, her head tilted to one side.

'Bill can have this,' she thought finally. 'He'll like a pretty princess. Now I'll make one for Charlie.'

She took a new piece of paper and had just started on a dog (which was jumping up and down and chasing its own tail so much that his ears got uneven) when Fred and George came rumbling down the stairs. They poked two identical, red-haired heads into the kitchen.

"Hey mum," said George cheerfully. "Can we get cake?"

"Sit down and wait for tea," answered his mother patiently. "We don't have any cake, but you can get a cookie later. If you behave," she added in a sort of resigned tone.

The twins sat down.

"Hey Gin!" said Fred and leaned over half the table to look at her drawings. "Gross. Princesses. You should draw something cooler."

"Like what?" Ginny asked and carefully chose the brown crayon to give the dog spots.

"Portraits of your two favouritest brothers, maybe?" suggested George and grinned widely.

Ginny wrinkled her nose and shook her head so that her hair flapped around her head.

"Try a self-portrait," said Molly from the counter as the kettle started whistling loudly. "Oh good. I'll go upstairs and see if your brother wants something. Fred, George, you clean the table while I'm gone. And don't you dare try and levitate the teacups again!"

She swept out of the room. The twins grumbled to themselves. To have to clean the table by hand, without magic, was so boring. When dad was home he sometimes let them use his wand for simple tricks, but mum was much more stern when it came to that.

As they started to gather Ginny's papers and put them on the counter, she looked at the dog she had made. It looked at her with large black eyes and wagged its tail. Charlie would have that one, she decided. Now she'd make one final picture for dad, and that would be enough. Maybe she would try a self-portrait?

She selected the black crayon and started with a head. It quickly got a mane of red hair and freckles all over its face, and then she made a body and dressed it in a blue cloak, much like the one her mother was wearing today. Then she was sort of at loss for what to do with it. The girl on the paper blinked at her dumbly. There was something missing.

Ginny nodded to herself and grabbed the black crayon again.

Once, when Ginny's parents had had guests over, she had been unable to sleep and walked down the stairs in the hopes that maybe mummy would come and read her a goodnight story, but she had stopped outside the kitchen as soon as she heard what the grown-ups were talking about.

There was a boy. His name was Harry, and he had a very sad life. Professor Dumbledore, who Ginny liked because he smelled of a sort of lemon candy that she'd gotten once when she'd had a sore throat, had spoken of him in a low voice, but Ginny had heard it anyway. She had heard that Harry didn't have any parents, and that made her feel very sad, because she loved her mummy and daddy very much and wanted Harry to have parents too. She'd liked listening to Professor Dumbledore speaking of Harry. It sounded just a little bit like a fairy tale: a boy who had no idea that he was famous and a wizard, who lived with relatives that didn't like him...

Of course Professor Dumbledore had noticed her standing outside the kitchen, and he had invited her in to hear the rest of the story. At first she'd been a little shy, because she knew that Professor Dumbledore was a really powerful wizard, and even Bill respected him. If seventeen-year old Bill respected someone, that someone must be really special. But Professor Dumbledore had been very nice and let her sit right next to him to listen.

She remembered what he had told her about Harry's appearance. Black hair and green eyes, and he had a scar on his forehead. Ginny's version turned out rather well. Her tongue was in the corner of her mouth as she drew a lightning bolt with the red crayon. She took the black one and wrote "HARRY POTTER" as neatly as she could underneath the picture of the black-haired boy, and "ME" underneath the self-portrait.

"He's not feeling very well," said Molly as she came back down again. She was looking a little worried. "Perhaps I ought to prepare a tray of tea for him... Oh, where did your brothers go?"

She sighed deeply and waved her wand towards the counter, where the ladle which had been stirring the cookie dough suddenly stopped and the mixing bowl turned itself upside-down to pour out dough onto a baking tin.

Ginny looked around. "They were here. They cleaned up, then they ran off."

"Oh for Merlin's sake... Fred! George! The tea is served!" She took a look at Ginny's drawing and smiled. "That's lovely, dear. Now up you go and take your crayons. It's teatime."

Ginny obeyed, but she carried her newest creation carefully, almost reverently. "I want to send it to Harry Potter, so that he won't feel so sad because he doesn't have any parents," she said hopefully. "Can I do that?"

Her mother shook her head. "Oh, I'm sure he'd love it, but you know Professor Dumbledore said that Harry mustn't know that he is a wizard. And he might wonder why a girl that he's never met send him a drawing. I tell you what, though," she continued as she saw Ginny's disappointed look, "I'll save this drawing, and when Harry gets a little older and he's found out the truth, we can send it to him. Does that sound good?"

"I guess," said Ginny and shrugged. "But you have to promise!"

"I promise, dear. Absolutely promise."

After a moment's hesitation, Ginny let her mother take her drawing and place it on top of a kitchen cabinet for safekeeping. Fred and George showed up again, this time they were grinning madly. That was never a good sign.

"What is this we hear about Harry Potter?" asked Fred. "Curious minds want to know."

"Well, you are not going to," snapped Molly. "It is not your business. And where have you been, by the way?"

"Out," said George simply.

"We have very important business to attend to," said Fred.

"Very important, mum."

She crossed her arms, not believing them for a moment. "If I find out you've been messing with the garden gnomes again, I shall make you do the dishes after dinner tonight. _Without_ magic," she added menacingly.

The eyes of the twins widened in identical looks of astonishment and hurt feelings.

"Oh mum, we'd never mess with the gnomes," said Fred innocently.

"Because you have told us so many times not to," added George.

Molly snorted, but let it pass. "Just sit down."

The twins did as she told them, much to her surprise. Both of them still sported devilish grins, however.

"Is it you who is so into this Harry Potter, Gin?" asked George.

"Our sister," chuckled Fred. "Mrs. Boy Who Lived. Makes a brother proud."

"Warms my heart."

"Restores my faith in love."

"Makes me feel sad for the poor bloke, though."

Ginny poked her tongue out at them both. "Shut _up_."

"You two lay off your sister," said Molly sternly.

"But she's so _easy_ to tease, mum!" complained George. "And now that Percy's off to Hogwarts, we've lost our favourite target."

"Really, you should pity us," agreed his twin.

"Well, you're not making Ginny your new one," said Molly and opened the oven to remove the finished cookies. "Here you go." She levitated three of the cookies to the table, where she placed them in front of her children. "Be careful, they are hot. I'm going to go upstairs with a tray for Ron now. You behave while I'm up there."

She gave her twins a warning look as a tea mug, a pot of honey, some milk and a cookie placed themselves neatly on a tray.

"And if I see that more cookies have mysteriously vanished when I get back..."

"We know," said Fred sullenly. "Dishes. No magic."

"And don't you forget it."

Molly took the tray and, careful to not spill anything, she made her way out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Ron's room. She had barely vanished until Fred and George went up to the plate of cooling cookies and reached out their hands to grab a few extra...

With a pair of shocked cries they withdrew at the same time, and started sucking their fingertips with annoyed looks on their faces.

"I was hoping she'd forgotten to put up the wards," sighed Fred sadly. "Alas."

"Mum never forgets that," said Ginny and giggled. "Serves you right."

She pulled up her legs and leant back in her chair, nibbling on her cookie. She was smiling to herself as she glanced up on the cupboard where her drawing lay waiting for the day when Harry Potter would get it. One day she would meet him, and he'd be delighted to receive it. He would put it up on his wall and look at it and feel better for knowing that there was someone in the world who cared about him.

Ginny laughed a little.

One day.


End file.
